How Town

by Michael Nava

  “Something like that.”

  “And do you have any idea of the kind of force that was used on the victim?”

  “I don’t understand,” he replied.

  “The skull is a pretty hard thing, isn’t it?” I asked, tapping my head.

  Rossi said, “Objection, vague.”

  Lanyon looked at Doyle. “Can you answer the question?”

  “Sure,” he said agreeably. “The skull is a pretty hard thing. It does take a certain amount of force to shatter it.”

  “Do you have an estimate of how long it actually took between the first blow and last blow to the victim’s head?”

  “They were fairly close in time.”

  “Fairly close?” I echoed. “Five seconds? Five minutes? An hour?”

  He turned his eyes upward for a second and his lips moved silently. “I’d say ten minutes, maximum.”

  “So, Mr. Doyle, what we have is someone striking another person with a baseball bat for a ten-minute period with sufficient force to shatter the victim’s skull, is that right?”

  He smiled, again, having apparently caught the drift of my questioning. “Are you asking me whether your client was strong enough to do it?”

  “Or sufficiently motivated.”

  Rossi and Doyle spoke simultaneously. “Objection.” “I can’t answer that.”

  “I have nothing further,” I said.

  Doyle was excused. Lanyon said. “Your next witness, Mr. Rossi?”

  “The People call James Mitchell,” Rossi said.

  James Mitchell was the first officer called to the scene of the motel the morning after the murder. He testified that there was no evidence of forcible entry. He had searched the grounds of the motel for a weapon without success. What he did find, in McKay’s suitcase, were pictures of nude teenage boys, engaged in sexual acts with each other and adult men. Over my relevance objection, the photos were admitted into evidence. With that, Rossi concluded his examination.

  “Officer Mitchell,” I said, rising, “what was the condition of the room when you entered it?”

  Rossi said, “Objection, vague.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Was there blood in the room?” I asked.

  Rossi stirred in his seat but said nothing.

  “Yeah, there was blood, all right,” Mitchell replied.

  “Where?” I asked, approaching him.

  “All over.”

  “On the walls?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the floor around the chair where Mr. McKay was bound?”

  Impatiently, he said, “Yeah. All over the room. Even on the windows.”

  “And how far were the windows from the chair?” I asked. “Your best estimate.”

  Thoughtfully, he said, “Five, eight feet.”

  “In other words,” I concluded, “would it be a fair statement that when Mr. McKay was struck, his blood sprayed across the room?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I smiled. “No guessing, just answer based on what you saw.”

  “Yes,” he said, fidgeting.

  I returned to counsel table and scribbled a note: “blood everywhere—why no bloody clothes from paul. no blood in car. ask sara if she saw him that night.”

  “Now, Officer,” I continued, looking up at him. “You testified there were no signs of forcible entry into the room, is that right?”

  “Yeah, it looked like he let the guy in.”

  “Well, was the door unlocked when you arrived at the scene?”

  He looked at me blankly. “The maid was there.”

  I scribbled a note to track down the maid.

  “But you don’t know whether the door was locked or unlocked the night McKay was murdered, do you?”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “So,” I continued, “as far as you know the door could’ve been unlocked.”

  “Objection,” Rossi said, “calls for speculation.”

  Lanyon said, “Sustained.”

  “Your Honor, if I may be heard.”

  Lanyon glanced down at me. “Save it, Counsel. I think we all see what you’re driving at.”

  I shrugged. I’d made my point—if the door had been left unlocked by McKay his murderer could have entered the room at any time with or without his consent.

  “Officer Mitchell, did you observe any signs of a struggle in the room?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “The room was a mess but …”

  I pressed him. “But what?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by struggle,” he said, petulantly.

  “Well, Officer,” I said, “McKay was gagged and bound when you found him. Were there any signs he resisted?”

  He repeated, “The room was a mess.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He drew a deep breath. “The bed wasn’t made. His suitcase was open and there was stuff all over.”

  “Officer, are you sure that wasn’t just bad housekeeping?”

  There was laughter in the courtroom. Rossi objected.

  Humorlessly, Lanyon said, “Sustained. The statement is stricken.”

  “Nothing further,” I said.

  “Step down,” Lanyon directed the officer. “Your next witness, Mr. Rossi.”

  “The People call Calvin Mota.”

  Mota was the fingerprint man. His testimony was crucial to the prosecution’s case because it provided the only evidence that Paul had been in McKay’s room. A bespectacled, civil-servant type, Mota began his testimony with a professorial calm that doubtless went over well with juries.

  Rossi got him to lay out his professional qualifications and was asking him to explain the process by which he made fingerprint comparisons. He asked, “Now, you’ve used two words, latent prints and inked prints. What do those terms mean?”

  Mota could probably have replied by rote, but he managed to put a little animation into it. “The latent fingerprints are usually those prints which are lifted at the crime scene and submitted to evidence for checking against a suspect. The comparison is made with an inked print. These are rolled at booking stations and kept on file cards in the sheriff’s bureau of identification.”

  “Tell me what produces a latent fingerprint,” Rossi said.

  On the bench, Lanyon stifled a yawn. It was getting near to noon.

  “Well,” Mota was saying, “latent prints are the result of certain body fluids that are secreted through the pores at the tips of the fingers, the palms of the hand and the soles of the feet. These fluids contain salts and fatty acid, amino acids, and also water. Sweat, in other words. Now of course, the other part of this is that you have to have a surface capable of recording the print …”

  He droned on, explaining how prints were developed, lifted and transferred to evidence cards. He explained how comparisons were made between the latent prints and inked prints by looking for points of similarity between the two. When there were enough such points—seven was what he looked for—he would make an identification.

  “Now,” Rossi said, his voice becoming brisker, “do you know whether the sheriff’s bureau of identification has an inked print of the defendant?”

  “Yes, it does,” Mota said.

  “And do you know how that print was acquired?”

  I broke in. “Your Honor, we stipulate that such a print exists. I don’t think it’s necessary to go into how it was acquired.”

  “Yes, go on, Mr. Rossi.”

  “Mr. Mota, you’ve heard testimony about a murder committed on Tuesday, July twenty-fifth, at the Little King Motel. Did you lift any fingerprints from that location?”

  “Yes,” Mota said. “On July twenty-fifth, in the morning.”

  “Did you compare any of those prints with the defendant’s inked print?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And what were the results?”

  “I was able to identify eleven of the prints at the crime sce
ne as the defendant’s fingerprints.”

  Next to me, Paul balled his fingers into his palms.

  “Relax,” I whispered.

  Mota was saying that Paul’s prints had been lifted from the metal toilet handle, a glass, the doorknob and McKay’s suitcase. Only the last location seemed at all suspicious and I made a note to ask Paul about it. After a couple of follow-up questions, Rossi finished.

  “Do you have any questions on this witness?” Lanyon asked.

  “One or two, Your Honor,” I rose. “Mr. Mota, were you able to lift any fingerprints off the victim’s body?”

  “No.”

  “What about the chair where he was sitting?”

  “No, I wasn’t, Counsel.”

  “Now, Mr. Mota, you’re not able to tell at what time these prints were made, are you?”

  “Do you mean, what? Day? Weeks?”

  “Well, in any twenty-four-hour period, you couldn’t tell by looking at it whether a print was made at twelve noon or at twelve midnight, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Nothing further.”

  Lanyon dismissed the witness and said, “It is now near noon. We will be in recess until one-thirty.”

  Paul whispered, “Why didn’t you ask him any more questions?”

  We rose while Lanyon left the bench. I turned to Paul and said, “Well, they were your prints, Paul. But all they prove is that you were there sometime before McKay was murdered. That’s not enough.”

  “What’s not enough?” Rossi asked, coming up behind us, all smiles.

  “Your evidence.”

  “We’re not done yet.”

  The bailiff tapped Paul on the shoulder. “Lunchtime.”

  “I’ll see you after lunch,” I said, as he was led away.

  Rossi rested his considerable butt against the edge of the table. “I like the way you took on Lanyon.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I keep waiting for him to take his revenge.”

  Rossi got up. “Don’t worry about that, Henry. He will.”

  10

  “HENRY, HOW ABOUT LUNCH?”

  I looked around and saw Sara standing at the rail that separated the gallery from the well of the court. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the night in her garden. Her smile was tentative, worried.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We stepped out of the courthouse into the blazing noontime heat. Men in shirtsleeves and women in sleeveless blouses poured from the nearby office buildings, faces hidden behind dark glasses, walking quickly to nearby fast-food places. Sara stopped and fished her own sunglasses out of her purse, adjusting them on her face, pushing stray, brittle hairs away from her face.

  “I know a nice place not far from here,” she said, “if you can stand the heat.”

  “Lead on,” I replied. We walked beneath the motionless branches of the sycamores from the civic center to the old streets of downtown. Untouched by urban renewal, these streets were lined with squat brick buildings and canopied entrances to vacant storefronts.

  The restaurant she’d chosen was a cubbyhole of prosperity in an otherwise fading neighborhood. It billed itself as a cafe on the big window that looked into it from the street but the starched white tablecloths, gleaming flatware and handsomely attired waiters belied the modest claim. Inside, the air, the paneled walls, the clatter of footsteps on parquet floors and the murmur of expense-account conversation bespoke unhurried affluence. We were led to a table in the back of the big dining room.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” the waiter asked.

  “Perrier,” she said, without looking at me.

  “Water,” I said. When he walked away, I watched her carefully remove her sunglasses. “How long were you in court?”

  “I was there from the start,” she said. “Doesn’t it bother you, Henry?”

  “What?”

  “Murder,” she replied. “The way he was killed was horrible,” she added, grimacing. “Or don’t you think about that?”

  “Oh, yes,” I answered. “I think about it, but not in the same way you do. I can’t afford to be shocked because then I don’t learn anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to know the mind of a murderer,” I said, and paused to sip the glass of water which a busboy had discreetly deposited on the table. “Talking to them doesn’t help much. Their explanations of why they killed are often incredibly banal.”

  “That surprises me.” she said. “I mean, it’s so—”

  “Dramatic?” I offered. “Exactly. And horrifying. So, of course they retreat into banalities. They can’t focus on the horror any more easily than we can. The only way I can reconstruct their mental states is to study how the killing was done.”

  “You make it sound so scientific,” she said edgily.

  “A little detachment helps.” I sipped more water.

  “That’s appalling.”

  I said, “One of the things I do in Los Angeles is draft wills for people with AIDS. Sometimes I’m the last person they see besides doctors and nurses. Everyone else has written them off, even the people they leave their things to. Now that’s true detachment.”

  We ordered lunch.

  I managed a few minutes with Paul in the holding tank before the noon recess ended. He sat against the wall, head tipped up, eyes closed, listening to my assessment of how the morning had gone. When I finished, he asked, “I saw Sara in the courtroom?”

  “Yes, I had lunch with her.”

  He lowered his head. “She hasn’t come to visit in a few days. It’s because you told her that I’d seen Ruth, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Paul. Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” he said softly. “It’s funny, Henry, this is the first time since we been married that I actually need her.”

  “Maybe you can learn to make a virtue out of necessity.”

  He stood up. “What’s going to happen in court?”

  “The cops will testify, and they’ll put the things they took during the search into evidence. The money. The pictures from the film.”

  “Did they develop it?” he asked, tensely.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I called Rossi and asked him about it and he told me they had the pictures. When I asked to see them, he said he couldn’t break the evidence seal except in open court. I asked him if he’d seen them and he said only Morrow had. Morrow told them they were pictures of a girl.”

  Paul nodded. “I didn’t want to get her involved in this.”

  “Well, they’re not really relevant so maybe we keep them out of the trial.”

  The bailiff came in and said, “The judge is about to take the bench.”

  “The People call Benjamin Vega.”

  Ben Vega made his way to the stand and perched there nervously while the oath was given to him, whispering an almost inaudible, “I will.”

  “Who is he?” Paul asked.

  “The officer who took the film from your car.”

  Paul shifted in his seat, straining forward to listen. Vega was being asked, “And how long have you been a police officer?”

  “Two years,” he said, eyes riveted on Rossi.

  “Officer Vega, did you take part in a search of the premises at 6537 La Tijera Drive on the evening of July twenty-seventh of this year?”

  “Yes, sir, I did,” he replied with, I thought, unnecessary servility.

  “What exactly did you do?”

  Vega took a deep breath and said, “Well, there were six of us assigned to the search. Detective Morrow took four officers into the house and me and Officer Mitchell, we were told to search the car.”

  “Describe the car.”

  “A black Mercedes sedan. Brown leather interior. It was parked in the driveway.”

  “Was it unlocked?”

  “The lady, Mrs. Windsor, I guess, she unlocked it for us after Morrow showed her the warrant.”

  “The warrant authorized a search of the car?”r />
  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what, if anything, did you recover from the car?”

  “I found a roll of film on the floor of the front seat, on the passenger’s side.”

  I leaned over to Paul. “Is that right?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  “And what did you do with the film, Officer Vega?”

  “I took it into the house and gave it to Detective Morrow.”

  “And did you see what Morrow did with it?”

  “Yes, sir. He put it in a baggie.”

  “No further questions.”

  Lanyon said, “Mr. Rios.”

  Ben Vega looked over at me nervously.

  “I have no questions of this witness.”

  “You’re excused, Officer Vega.”

  The prosecution’s next witness was the criminalist from the forensics lab who had developed the pictures. His testimony was limited to establishing that the film which Vega had given to Morrow, Morrow had then given to him. He had developed the film and returned it and the pictures to Morrow. This was called establishing the chain of custody, a necessary foundation before physical evidence could be introduced into a proceeding. Although I might find reason to try to pick the chain apart at trial, for now I was only interested in seeing the pictures. Rossi had the witness identify the envelope into which he’d placed the pictures and when it was my turn to examine him I passed.

  “The People call Dwight Morrow.”

  Morrow stalked to the witness stand, took the oath, folded his hands on his lap and stared out at us with expressionless black eyes.

  “Detective Morrow, what is your current occupation?” Rossi asked, leaning against the podium.

  “I’m a detective with the Los Robles Police Department,” he said stonily, “assigned to Homicide.”

  “And how long have you had that assignment?”

  “Two years.”

  “And prior to that, what was your assignment?”

  “I worked in Sex Crimes.”

  Rossi drew a breath. “And when you were assigned to Sex Crimes,” he said, “were you ever involved in an investigation relating to the defend—”

  I was on my feet. “Objection, this is completely irrelevant.”

  Lanyon bestirred himself from his postprandial daydreams and asked the reporter to read back the question. When this was done, he said, “Will you approach the bench, Counsel.”